


Sugar, We're Going Down Swinging

by laceface



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, I don't quite know where I'm going with this, I'll add more tags as things happen in the story, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:10:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5042464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laceface/pseuds/laceface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This new world is completely different and exactly the same.</p><p>Sure, the internet is confusing and the fact that I just saw a pair of dames walking down the street holding hands is new, but underneath, people are still just scared of not having someone’s hand to hold when the power goes out.</p><p>I’m not an exception, I suppose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sugar, We're Going Down Swinging

July is warmer than I remember it.

My head is clearer than it was before. Maybe I had too much to lose, back then. Maybe it clouded me, like a glass of water as it's poured from the sink, little bubbles going everywhere. Particles of not-me hanging out and blocking the view. 

_{Everyone has too much to lose.}_

I know, big man. I know. But things don’t work in this century like they did in the last.

_{Losing is human nature, мой друг. Humans live to lose, and that has not changed since the time of the ancients, nor will it be different in the moment of the last human’s final breath.}_

Buzzkill.

But he’s right. This new world is completely different and exactly the same.

Sure, the internet is confusing and the fact that I just saw a pair of dames walking down the street holding hands is new, but underneath, people are still just scared of not having someone’s hand to hold when the power goes out.

I’m not an exception, I suppose.

My world is still centered firmly around Steve, still spinning out of my control. Definitely not an exception. But people never like to admit that they aren’t as in-control as they think they are—I must be different. The Soldier must have taught me that.

Even Steve, the little scrap turned big scrap, is different than he was before he went in the ice (which I’m sure is to be expected). The man I see running in the park and smiling at children as he passes is the same as the one who used to draw pictures of dragons and unicorns for the little ones in the apartment downstairs. Steve just doesn’t trust himself not to break things now, with his new strength, so he doesn’t get close enough. I see it in the tightness of his shoulders and the flinches (almost too small to see) when one of the little ones touches his arm. The careful distance he puts between himself and things that are too easily shattered. (Like me, I suppose. The one he couldn’t save.) (This is why Steve loves his shield, it’s one of the only things in the world he knows he probably couldn’t break if he tried.)

This is why he doesn’t come around anymore, I tell myself. This is why he stopped visiting. He knows I’m fragile in this new world, and he’s afraid he’ll break me. Not because he doesn’t like who I’ve become. Steve would never think that.

Besides, I’m broken already. There’s nothing left to smash. I’ve made peace with this fact.

(Sometimes, when the sun is too hot and the arm is still cold, cold, cold, and there’s no one to run from anymore besides myself, I wish he could be there to wrap his skinny arm around my neck and tell me what I need to hear to pick myself up and brush myself off.)

The truth is, Steve scares me a little. He has the same laugh and the same long-fingered hands (that were meant for holding a paintbrush, not curling into a fist) but he’s too still, too careful about what words come out of his mouth. The old Stevie Rogers talked a mile-a-minute, and never stopped moving. Except when he was asleep, when the worries and the cares melted away and he stilled, dead to the world, or when he was with me and he didn’t have to speak to communicate, didn’t have anything to prove.

(But I don’t blame Steve for changing, for running from the pain instead of facing it head on like he did when his afternoon activities consisted of flailing his bony fists in back allies and refusing when I tried to help him pay for art school. He deserves to put himself first. Part of me is happy I’m not worth the broken noses anymore, not worth the hurt. I’ll never hurt him again.) (I try not to think about him scraping himself up over someone else, someone who deserves to be loved by Steve Rogers.) ( ~~I never did~~.) (Sometimes, I break things, like pencils and coffee mugs and doors. Doors just aren’t made like they used to be.)

_{You aren’t made like you used to be.}_

(I guess he’s right.)

Modern Steve, the cold man they call Cap, is the exact opposite. (I hate it that they don’t call him Steve, can’t they see how it makes him feel like they don’t really want to know him? Like they just keep him around because of the serum in his veins and the fact that he makes the team better just by existing? Natalia— _{Natasha,}_ the Soldier reminds me. _{She’s Natasha to you}—_ is the only exception, but she’s always been the exception.) He’s still, unemotional when he’s awake (except for with Stark, who annoys him enough to breach his shell), and opens up when he’s alone, when he drops the act. When he thinks no one can see him cry and throw knives when car horns wake him up and rip pillows in two and smash his cell phone in his hand when it rings suddenly and startles him. I know the only reason Steve can sleep is because he knows no one can hear him screaming in the middle of the night.

Of course, I know these things because I watch Steve at night when I can’t sleep myself, when the Soldier tells me I’m crashing. Because Steve is home, and only when I can hear him on the other side of a wall or see his silhouette on the other side of closed blinds can I be at ease. I’ve gotten used to sleeping on rooftops and ledges.

I see how Steve hates his body now that no one cares who’s inside of it. _I_ care, but I know Steve doesn't want to be helped, the selfless bastard. Doesn't like unloading his problems onto other people.

A therapist would probably intimidate him more than an army of aliens with three heads each.

_{He is like you in that respect.}_

Why would I need a therapist when I have you?

_{I digress.}_

Whatever.

( ~~I’ll wait for you, Rogers. It’s you and me, pal. To the end of the line.~~ )

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where this is going but I like it so I'm going to write more. Feedback is encouraged and appreciated. Un-beta'd. All mistakes are my own. Taking volunteers if anyone wants to beta for me occasionally. Thank.


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